Walden

Walden by Henry David Thoreau is my favorite nonfiction book. I think it was written in the 1840s. It is a record of Thoreau's stay in a cabin he had built at Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. He begins by describing ascetics in India crawling across the Indian subcontinent and saying that farmers were performing greater austerities by working from dawn till dusk six days a week in the maintenance of their farms. He says that life should be simplified, that "a man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can let alone." What can we do without?

Thoreau gives a wondrous description of the pond and the woods in various seasons.

Thoreau says, "Not that which goes into the mouth defiles a man but the appetite with which it is consumed." This is an altered version of what Christ says in the New Testament: "Not that which goes into the mouth defiles a man but that which comes out." By this Christ was talking about things like blasphemy, fornication, and other actions we perform that are against the will of God. So which statement is more accurate?